More Than WE Know

One of the key challenges of running a small business is cash flow. The opportunities abound but you don’t always have enough cash to take advantage of them:

• You have orders piling up, but not enough cash to buy raw materials
• You could be more productive if you had better equipment, but can’t afford the investment
• You could get more done if you hired an assistant, but you don’t have enough money short-term to make the payroll.

These are the challenges faced by the Women Entrepreneurs I work with. These are also the challenges faced by the entrepreneurs who come to the Kiva organization.

Kiva is a non-profit organization that connects entrepreneurs in economically depressed areas with people like you and me.

Kiva partners with local micro-finance institutions to identify entrepreneurs who would benefit from a short-term micro loan (usually $150 -$1200 USD paid back in 6 to 12 months).

These loans help the entrepreneurs grow their businesses and obtain sustainable success.

While Kiva works with both male and female entrepreneurs, microfinance investments have traditionally helped Women Entrepreneurs. Many organizations find that women are very responsible about repaying the loans and invest the profits in ensuring a better life for themselves and their children.

According to Kiva:

“Microfinance programs have generally targeted poor women. By providing access to financial services only through women—making women responsible for loans, ensuring repayment through women, maintaining savings accounts for women, providing insurance coverage through women—microfinance programs send a strong message to households as well as to communities.

Many qualitative and quantitative studies have documented how access to financial services has improved the status of women within the family and the community. Women have become more assertive and confident. In regions where women’s mobility is strictly regulated, women have become more visible and are better able to negotiate the public sphere. Women own assets, including land and housing, and play a stronger role in decision making.

In some programs that have been active over many years, there are even reports of declining levels of violence against women.” (CGAP)

The women themselves report increased confidence and levels of self-esteem as they develop control over their own lives.

Kiva accepts loans of $25 USD. You select the entrepreneur you want to help, track their repayment process and get reports on their business progress. When the loan is repaid, Kiva returns your funds or enables you to re-loan the money to another entrepreneur.

Women Entrepreneurs have the ability to change the world, More Than WE Know.

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Ask yourself: Are you earning all you can with your small business?

Do you give as much value (or more) as your competitors but consistently charge less than they do?

Do you fantasize about starting your own business or expanding the one you have, but stop yourself from doing it because you worry you might fail or look foolish?

Do you have so many projects and ideas that you don’t know which one to start on? Or you work on all of them at the same time, never really finishing any of them?

Do you put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own - Spending only your spare time and left-over energy on building your business and advancing your skills?

Do you dread looking at your financial statements, bills and invoices? Do you hate following up on overdue payments and deadbeat customers? Do you avoid negotiating for better deals with suppliers and distributors?

If so, you are probably not earning all that you can with your business.

You may recall that recently I wrote an article on negotiating fees in which I reviewed the book Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation–and Positive Strategies for Change

That book pointed out that our tendency to ask for less during negotiations translates to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in income over a woman’s lifetime.

Similarly, Barbara Stanny’s book Overcoming Underearning(R): A Five-Step Plan to a Richer Life and her companion CD Guided Exercises for Overcoming Underearning point out that many of the reasons that people underearn are due to habits and beliefs about money.

Barbara Stanny’s father was one of the founders of H&R Block (he was the “R”). As a result, Barbara inherited a sizable trust fund. You would think that Barbara, of all people, would have no money issues; but the opposite is the case.

Barbara had many of the same challenges that the rest of us do - believing it was somehow inappropriate for a woman to focus on money, feeling that her contribution was not valuable enough to be compensated for, and having difficulty distinguishing between intelligent and foolish risk-taking.

It was only after Barbara suffered financial setbacks due to her beliefs about money that she realized she could help other women ovecome the same challenges. She has written several books, including an interesting study of high-earning women,Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life that help women overcome their issues with money. She has become known as the Leading Authority on Women and Money.

This is powerful stuff. It’s especially relevant to Women Entrepreneurs. Despite a more even playing field, WE still tend to earn less revenue, make less profit, set smaller goals, take fewer risks and sell our companies for less than our male counterparts.

This is in spite of the fact that WE know WE work just as hard, have just as much passion and just as much talent as the next guy.

I’m determined to get to the bottom of this puzzle. Over the coming weeks, I’ll continue to research the differences in the way women and men approach our business, our finances and our life.

WE work too hard to earn less than WE deserve.

What about you? Are you an underearner? Do you think you should be earning more than you do? How is your relationship with money holding you back from earning your full potential?